


Dead Memories

by Raindropsonwhiskers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 12, Angst, Dhawan!Doctor - Freeform, F/M, Roleswap, Whittaker!Master - Freeform, hidden identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23527843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/pseuds/Raindropsonwhiskers
Summary: "Jade Tudor is, according to everyone around her, a perfectly normal woman. She also happens to be an alien older than human civilization who is faking her life as a member of said civilization in order to get her nemesis’ attention. As one does."Basically, an actorswap AU where the Master decides to travel with the Doctor instead of revealing herself during Spyfall.CURRENTLY ON HIATUS
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 71





	1. Spyfall

**Author's Note:**

> Here is yet another Doctor Who fic, because that's what my brain chose to hyperfixate on during quarantine, apparently. This fic is going to update slower than Should I Stay, probably once or twice a week instead of every other day, but the other chapters should be longer. I hope you guys enjoy it!

Jade Tudor is, according to everyone around her, a perfectly normal woman. She grew up in a small town, went to university, got her master’s in physics, and now teaches the same. On weekends, she plays the drums in a cover band with a few of her coworkers; they aren’t half bad. She wears glasses and dress shirts with cute patterns and keeps her hair short, because she doesn’t like the extra hassle. She also happens to be an alien older than human civilization who is faking her life as a member of said civilization in order to get her nemesis’ attention. As one does.

Currently, she’s sitting in the MI6 headquarters, waiting for said nemesis to arrive. As the only witness to one of the mysterious attacks on their spies - which she had helped orchestrate, of course - Jade was quickly taken into custody and questioned. Now, she sits on the vaguely uncomfortable chair in the same room as one of the victims and waits for the one person on this useless planet she cares about to arrive.

And arrive he does, led in by the head of MI6 himself. She hasn’t seen his new face yet, but she certainly isn’t complaining. He’s  _ pretty _ , there’s no other way to describe it. Good cheekbones, amazing hair, faint stubble(how exciting; she can’t remember the last time he had facial hair), dark eyes that are quickly scanning the room and right, she needs to be a shocked and scared human now.

She stops staring, starts glancing between the floor and the victim. Fiddles with the hem of her shirt for good measure - this body can never seem to stay still, always messing with something. It’s a funny change, she thinks, from her previous body’s calm and collected manner. Still, it will work all the better to trick the Doctor into trusting her. He always likes the ones who remind him of himself, or rather, who he thinks he is. The sweet, trusting, awkward-but-endearing ones are his favorites, and Jade is all those things to a T.

“This is our only witness. She saw what happened to this agent,” C explains, gesturing to her.

She stands, smiles faintly, and says, “Hello, I’m Jade Tudor. You must be that Doctor bloke they told me they were bringing in to talk to me.”

“Nice to meet you, Jade Tudor,” he smiles back despite the serious atmosphere, and she can’t help the way her hearts flutter just a bit. She hates it.

“Is she in a coma?” asks a girl with long dark hair, one of the trio of pets who followed him in.

“Apparently, it’s a little more horrific than that,” says C. “Now, I’m told this is your expertise, dealing with the impossible.”

C hands him a tablet that has all of the agent’s vitals on it - Jade knows because she checked to make sure everything was going according to plan. His face grows serious as he looks at the data on the screen.

“That is impossible,” he mutters. “Whatever it is has rewritten her DNA, to the point where she’s isn’t human anymore. She’s just an empty shell now.”

Jade widens her eyes. “Oh, the poor woman.”

"Is she gonna live, Doc?" asks another one of his little following, an older man.

"There's nothing left  _ to _ live, Graham. She's been erased. It's beyond any human technology, though," he says. "You were right to call me."

"I was rather worried you were going to say that," C sighs. "Doctor, the security of this entire planet is at stake. Can we rely upon you?"

"Of course you can," he replies. "First, though, I want to talk to Jade, find out what she saw."

Jade nods. "Anything you need to know, just ask!"

He smiles again, gentle and soothing. "What exactly did you see?"

"Well, I was on my flight home from visiting my cousin in California," a completely fictitious character, invented as an excuse to meet with Barton before the plan was put in place, "and I got up to use the restroom. The door was unlocked, so I walked in, and I saw her," she nods to the agent, "getting attacked by this  _ thing _ . Looked like it was a person made of light or something, all bright and hard to look at. It was grabbing her, and when it saw me it just kind of… disappeared."

"Probably a teleport," he mutters.

"That makes no sense! Teleportation isn't possible," she protests, in the tone of someone who is quite sure she knows what she's talking about.

"No, couldn't have been. If it were short range, it wouldn't be able to get off the plane. Long range would've made noise of some sort. Ooh, could be interdimensional!" he rambles, standing and pacing, then he pulls out the latest version of that  _ stupid _ sonic screwdriver and scans her. His face lights up at the result. "Yes! Spontaneous interdimensional travel always leaves a field of null particles around it, and you were close enough to get caught in the backwash. So whatever it was, it's not from this dimension..."

"I thought null particles were strictly theoretical?" she asks.

"For you, maybe," he says in that absentmindedly condescending way she hates having directed at her.

He's caught up in his own thoughts again, now, and she takes advantage of his distraction to look closer at his new gaggle of pets. The requisite pretty girl is there, sharing a look with the quiet young man next to her. The older man is a bit unexpected, if she's being honest; maybe he's a relative of one of the young ones.

"Sorry 'bout him," the young man says. "He doesn't mean to be rude, it just happens."

"Oh, I don't mind," she replies. "I know the type, too smart for their own good." And if she hasn't just summarized his entire being, she doesn't know what would.

The older man(Graham? She probably won't bother to remember) smiles and nods in agreement.

The Doctor suddenly turns to face them. "Right, come on, let's go."

"Should I come too?" she asks, though she already knows the answer.

"Yes! The more the merrier, eh?" he replies. “And I might have more questions later.”

She joins them as they slowly solve the puzzle she laid out for them, though the Doctor manages to miss every piece she hands him regarding her identity.

"We should be wondering, who's the spy _ master _ ," she points out to him, and he merely smiles at her, tells her she's doing a great job, and gives her a gold star.

"Maybe they're working with another alien," she suggests as he wonders how Barton got into contact with the Kasaavin. He dismisses her, says there's no evidence Barton had any other accomplices, and she resists the urge to slap him.

"Yes, I have my  _ Master's _ in physics. Always been very interested in space travel, though," she says pointedly as she chats with his little pets at the party. "Always wanted to travel the stars." And he's too busy hunting down Barton to notice.

She's  _ this  _ close to just revealing her identity on the plane - and the thought of the way his eyes would widen, the smile quirking his lips would drop, the panic would flood his face when he realized makes it very tempting - when she gets a far better idea. She's been playing up the Cute Blonde Fascinated With The Stars act for so long, what's a few more weeks or months doing it? If the reveal of who she really was would hurt him now, after a few scant hours, she can hardly imagine how he'd react after days, weeks of knowing and trusting her.

So, she doesn't drop another hint for him, doesn't gloat when he discovers the bomb is sonic-proof, and stays the hell away from Barton so he can't ruin her disguise. When the Kasaavin are gone again, back to their home dimension, she takes the opportunity he practically lays at her feet.

"I know you have a job," he says, "and I'm sure you love it. But, if you want to get a little more up close and personal with those stars…"

She doesn't even let him finish before she agrees to come along. "Of course I do! Are you serious?"

"Jade Tudor, I would be honored," he smiles.

There's a part of her that's rejoicing in it, in the way he smiles at her and the warmth in his eyes. There's another part that roils with rage; how  _ dare _ he love her more as a human than as his equal, how  _ dare _ he keep her as one of his pets, how  _ dare _ he force her to hide herself behind this facade to get close to him? She ignores both parts, for now, and smiles back. He'll get what he deserves soon enough, she'll make sure of it.


	2. Orphan 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sweet Lord, writer's block is kicking my ass. It might be a bit until the next update on either of my WIPs. In the meantime, enjoy this massive chapter!

She doesn’t know  _ how _ the Doctor managed to find a pod of deep-space squid mid-way through their mating season, but she does know the large tentacle and the puddle of slime oozing from it are definitely his fault. Jade is the sort of person who would happily help clean up after the Doctor’s messes, though, so there she is, mop in hand, trying to ignore the way the slime is ruining her trousers.

It’s been nearly a week since the Doctor offered to take her with him, she realizes as she scrubs. He still has yet to catch on, though she’s still dropping hints. She’d mentioned offhand that her favorite animals were cheetahs, and all that had gotten her was an hour-long lecture on their evolution. Even saying she played the drums hadn’t caught his attention, though he had pulled out the guitar from his previous self and messed around on it for a while afterwards. The songs he plays now are slower, sadder, than before.

Jade has even become friends with her fellow companions. Yasmin - Yaz, now that they’re close - had been delighted to have another girl on board, Ryan made an effort to get to know her, and even Graham had bonded with her over their exasperation with the Doctor. They're all so insipidly  _ nice _ and  _ sweet _ and oh, she's going to have fun with them once she stops this little pretense. For now, though, she suffers through shared meals and post-adventure movies with them, and they greet her with smiles that she returns as best she can fake them.

The Doctor's grown fond of Jade as well. She helps him when he's messing with the mechanical bits of the TARDIS, tools scattered haphazardly across the floor and wires dangling out from open panels. He'll reach a hand out for a part and she'll pass it over. If it brings back memories of their childhood spent working in harmony, she tries to forget them. They'd all turned out to be lies, anyway.

Graham’s voice breaks her reminiscing. Something about a free vacation, he’s saying, and holding up six square pieces, fitting them together into what she recognizes as a teleport cube a second too late to stop him.

The Master hates beaches and spas. She finds them annoyingly cheery, and really only good for demolishing with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately, Jade finds them charming, so it is with great reluctance that she plasters a smile on her face and looks around the place.

It’s bland - all pale dirt and smooth white buildings. There doesn’t seem to be anything around the resort, just endless flat brown, stretching into the blue horizon. Since the surroundings seem marginally more boring than the resort itself, Jade decides to follow the Doctor as he snoops around. Knowing him, he’ll probably stumble across something deadly and/or world ending eventually, and that will at least be  _ interesting. _

Instead, they find Ryan. He had somehow, in the five minutes that he’d been on his own, managed to acquire a hopper virus. It takes all of her self control not to laugh at the way he panics, but Jade would be sympathetic. She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from chuckling, and lays a reassuring hand on his shoulder while the Doctor gets rid of the virus.

“Should I stay with him?” she asks as Ryan flails at the imaginary bats. “I don’t know if we should leave him like this.”   


“No, it’ll wear off soon enough,” the Doctor says, waving his hand. “Everything’ll be fine.”

As if on cue, the speaker system crackles to life and a voice announces, “This is a routine Tranquility drill. All guests, please assemble at your nearest muster station. Relax. This is a routine Tranquility drill.”

Jade gives him a look.

“Let’s go investigate. It’s probably nothing. Usually nothing,” he shrugs, then makes a face. “I say usually.”

With that, he heads toward one of the hallways. She follows him, while behind them the other guests begin to file out of the room.

Even the hallways of this place are boring, she thinks as they walk. No windows, though given the lack of environment to look at, that’s not surprising. The few plants that adorn the walls look halfway to death already, and at this point anything more would be a mercy killing. It’s tempting - she has her TCE in her pocket even now - but hardly worth blowing her cover for.

That annoying little hostess whose name she doesn’t care to recall is standing in front of a door, looking nervous and shifty. Probably up to something.

“Coming up to the linen cupboard now,” the hostess mutters, likely into an earpiece or commdot.

“Hyphen-with-a-3,” the Doctor says, brandishing the crisp bag containing the hopper virus, “I just pulled this out of my friend.”   


Hyphen-with-a-3 blinks. “Well, we do not make any judgements on our guests and fully support any way you choose to enjoy yourself here at Tranquility Spa,” she says ingratiatingly.

“It wasn’t recreational, this is a weapon,” the Doctor says, annoyed. “I’d say someone is targeting you. Now, why would they do that? And what’s with the alarm? And why do you look so concerned? Also, where does the 3 come in ‘Hyphen’? Actually, no, that one can wait.”

“I assumed it took the place of the ‘e’,” Jade says. “But now I’m not so sure.”

He nods consideringly, and then says, “Also also, what’s behind this door? No linen cupboard needs that complex a key. I want a look.”

“Guests aren’t permitted in the…” Hyphen-with-a-3 falters. “Linen cupboard.”

The Doctor reaches into the ridiculous blue coat he’s taken to wearing this time, and pulls out his psychic paper. “How about Pan-Galactic Standards and Practices Officer?”

Whatever response the Doctor had been hoping for, the Master doubts it was the look of blank befuddlement on Hyphen-with-a-3’s face.

“Healthy and Safety?” he attempts.

A slight head shake.

“Security and Hygiene?”

Nothing.

“Resort inspector.”

At that one, Hyphen-with-a-3’s eyes go wide with fear.

“Now, why don’t you and your excellent tail show us inside?” the Doctor says with a slight smile.

Hyphen-with-a-3 looks reluctant, but presses a finger to the pad that unlocks the door to the ‘linen cupboard’.

“It’s after the second ‘h’ but before the final ‘n’,” she says as they enter. “The 3.”

“Told you,” Jade nods. “And you do realize Health and Safety and Security and Hygiene are the same thing, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” he grins. “But a lot of other people don’t.”

The ‘linen cupboard’ is most decidedly  _ not. _ It’s a cold, dark gray, for some reason poorly lit despite the lights attached to the walls. An array of weaponry takes up one side of the room. A rectangle of six computer screens are set up along the wall, displaying statistics and maps of the resort. From the ominous red circles on them, the drill the announcements mentioned was no more a drill than Jade was a human. That is - only superficially and for the purposes of deception.

“A deadlocked room, with its own armory,” the Doctor mutters. “Don’t tell me, honeymoon suite.”

The Master can’t help a slight snort of amusement at that. Given the Doctor’s previous taste in spouses, it wasn’t too unlikely. River had been quite fun, the few times they’d met. Utterly insane, but who of the Doctor’s little pets wasn’t?

The Doctor glances at her and she quickly schools her expression into one of innocent shock and interest.

The door opens and a woman enters. “Hyph3n, what the hell are you doing? Who’s this?”

She marches up to the Doctor and grabs him by the shoulder, turning him away from the screens. The Master’s hand inches toward the pocket of her jacket housing the TCE;  _ no one _ is allowed to touch the Doctor like that. Well, except her, but that’s different. Nemesis privileges, and all that.

“I’m the Doctor, and  _ you _ , madam, are too close for comfort!” he snaps, stepping away. She relaxes ever so slightly at that and moves her hand away from her pocket.

“We’re resort inspectors,” Jade adds helpfully.

“We’ve just been inspected,” the woman says, wary.

“Well, we like to surprise.” The Doctor lifts the crisp bag again. “Just like this virus I found in your vending machine. And it isn’t working alone - there’s other variations, and that’s probably why your ionic membrane is down.”

“What’s an ionic membrane?” asks Jade.

“It’s a defense mechanism, filters out unwanted organisms based on genetic code. Very advanced, very powerful technology.” He pauses his explanation, looking suspicious. “Why would you need an ionic membrane to protect a resort spa?”

Before the woman can explain - or, more likely, make an excuse - a faint voice comes through on her comms unit. It’s just loud enough to make out the words, “It’s attacking the guests.”

And then, all Hell promptly breaks loose.

It’s quite fun to watch the dots on the screen blink from green to red. In her head, the Master takes bets on which ones will be next to go. The black and white footage of the guests running, backed by screaming and the repetitive, monotone “Guest offline.” of the computer system is the best thing she’s seen in  _ ages _ . But, of course, nothing good can last; Jade would be worried about her newfound friends.

“They’re still out there!” Jade gasps. Grabbing the intercom, she says, “Everyone, to the linen cupboard in the north corridor! Now! This is  _ not _ a drill!”

The Doctor smiles approvingly and her hearts do that awful thing where they speed up just from him looking at her. She hates it, and hates even more that it’s because she’s saving some petty little humans from their very entertaining deaths.

With a gentle hand on her shoulder, the Doctor moves Jade out of the way to get in front of the keyboard and start neutralizing the hopper viruses. There’s a better way to do it, but Jade wouldn’t know that, even though it irks the Master to no end that he’s doing it wrong.

“Right,” he says, standing. “That should handle the viruses, but it’ll take a bit. More urgently, I need to rebuild your ionic membrane to kick out whatever's killing the guests.”

"You can't build an ionic membrane from scratch!" the woman protests.

The Master represses the urge to scoff - even the Doctor's far inferior mechanical skills can manage an ionic membrane with the parts lying around this place.

The Doctor apparently doesn't bother to resist that urge. "If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build  _ you _ from scratch," he snaps. "Now,  _ move! _ "

Hyph3n ushers in the guests as they come, and soon Yaz and Graham are both inside. The Master's a little disappointed; Ryan had been her favorite. She was planning to keep him.

It doesn't take the Doctor long to finish making the new and improved ionic membrane, and soon after the Dregs, whatever they are, are forced out of the resort. Graham runs off to find Ryan, who, much to the Master’s delight, is not dead. The woman in charge, whose name is something short and brusque that the Master is not going to remember, leads them outside while she explains the situation.

“What is it that got in here?” the Doctor asks.

“A couple of the locals, Dregs,” the woman replies. “They’re always trying to attack, that’s why we have shields. But that virus that brought the shields down, the Dregs couldn’t have done that. Somebody hacked the system.”

The Master must admit, it’s a decent plan. Slip in a hopper virus or three to disable the shields, let the horrible monsters eat the residents, and ideally, no one would be left to wonder how they got in in the first place. Of course, as was his hobby, the Doctor got in the way, but still… not a bad attempt.

Her musings on the Doctor’s meddling are interrupted by the sudden reveal that the dull expanse surrounding them is not, in fact, real. Honestly, she’s not particularly surprised - it’s a common enough practice, though usually not on planets with hostile atmospheres, filled with creatures dead-set on killing the vacationers. That would certainly make things more exciting, though.

The Doctor is busy getting self-righteous and sacrificial over some old man who is more than likely dead by now, and the Master sighs. He better not drag them all outside of the shields to find the man.

The Doctor drags them all outside of the shields to find the man. Jade is hooked up to an oxygen system on what she’s just learned is an orphan planet - Orphan 55, and that sounds familiar in a way she can’t quite place - about to face the extremely versatile mutated remnants of whatever had lived there before the place got thoroughly irradiated. If she weren’t so dedicated to her cover, the Master would have shot him by now. Instead, she sits next to him and listens to him ramble as he slowly puts together the pieces to the puzzle of this planet. It’s almost soothing, the sound of his voice as he drones on and on, though the way he barely acknowledges her is quite annoying. And then the truck begins to shake violently.

“This vehicle is compromised,” the computer system helpfully informs them as the truck slowly stills from its shuddering.

“The hell was that?” the man driving demands.

Without hesitation, the Doctor stands up from his seat and goes to check outside. When he comes back, his face is grim.

“Bad news,” he announces. “We have to leave the truck and head out on foot. It’s our only option at this point.”

Outside, the landscape is rocky and dotted with the occasional tree. As she breathes in, the Master can taste all the lovely toxic compounds that form the mist swirling around them. It’s the sort of environment that would kill a human in mere minutes, even with the oxygen they’re using. She has a sneaking suspicion that the sunny alternative is worse.

The old woman’s cries break the silence. “Benni? Benni, where are you?”

Though Yaz manages to slap a hand over her mouth, it’s too late. The Dregs heard the call of such easy prey and couldn’t resist. In seconds, they’ve swarmed over the hills and their shrieks fill the air.

“Everyone, back to the truck,  _ now! _ ” the Doctor urges.

“What are we going to do?” Jade pants as they all scramble into the truck.

It’s easy to see the Dregs gathering on the screen, their orange markers clustering around the truck like vultures around a carcass. Not long after, there’s a sound of claws against metal that sets her teeth on edge, and then another ear-piercing shriek from just outside the vehicle.

Then the old man, Benni, begins to shout, and the Master is going to savor the look of pure despair on that old woman’s face for years to come. It may not have been her doing, but the sudden shift between delight and grief is a work of art. Too bad the Dregs seem too mindless to appreciate it, she thinks with a sigh, even as Jade lays a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder.

The panel at the top of the truck begins to peel back, light bursting through as the metal protests. Quickly, the Doctor pulls open the hatch on the floor and urges them out. Jade helps the others out, and is second to last to escape. Or, rather, given Hyph3n’s screams, second to last out the hatch, and last to escape. The sun above is blistering hot, and far worse than the mist that had covered the ground minutes ago had been. Luckily, the entrance to the tunnels isn’t far. 

Somehow, the woman with the gun managed to get herself thrown right into their path. The Doctor insists on grabbing her. Since she seems to know the password to get into the tunnels beneath, it isn’t a complete waste. Still, when the young lady Ryan had found grabs her gun and threatens to ruin everything, the Master wishes they’d left her to the Dregs.

She has to admire the dedication to so thoroughly ruining someone’s entire life - goodness knows she’s had plenty of hands-on experience with the same - but there’s a line between healthy risk and foolish self-endangerment that this young woman is not treading carefully. Not that it matters once the Dreg shows up, because she manages to escape via the teleport, because nothing in the Master’s life can ever be easy.

They manage to get a heavy, quickly-locked door between them and the Dregs, though it doesn’t take long for the creatures to catch up. The mesh-lined glass separating the two groups feels very thin.

“Okay, listen up,” the woman says. “There’s stairs just beyond here that will take us down and back. Just one catch - the route goes through a Dreg nest.”

“We’ll just have to be quick, then!” Jade says, enthusiasm forced.

As if to reinforce her point, the Dreg outside the window begins shrieking and banging its claws against the glass. Eyes wide, the guests move toward the door into the tunnels as quickly as they can.

The Doctor ushers everyone out, and Jade barely catches the warning that issues from his oxygen system over the screaming. “Oxygen supply failing.”

“You talk too much,” the woman says. “Using up all your oxygen.”

Unsurprising, really. The Doctor talks whether anyone’s listening or not, trying to fill the silence, trying to prove something. Not that the Master’s much better - she’s self-aware enough to know that she tends to ramble, though her’s at least have a point. He, however, could go on for hours without any clear purpose. Unbidden, memories of how he’d lost his vision in his last body return; he’d been a good storyteller last time, and Missy had enjoyed listening to his adventures.

They’d been so close to something, that last go-around. She’d been changing for him, trying to fit his impossible standards, and working so hard for it. Not that it had mattered in the end, of course. She shakes her head. No use ruminating on pointless memories.

Of  _ course _ this awful planet is Earth. Of  _ course _ the Doctor stays behind in the nest of what are probably mutated descendants of his little human pets and insists the rest of them go on ahead.  _ This _ , the Master fumes, is precisely why she hates spas. Can’t even enjoy a horror movie in real time without it being ruined.

The room the stairs lead to is utterly destroyed, probably at the hands of the girl Ryan teleported with. The Master admires her dedication, she really does. This is the sort of rampant chaos that takes careful planning to achieve. If it weren’t for the Doctor, her plan would have gone perfectly. As if he were summoned by her thoughts of mayhem, the Doctor comes running up the stairs, though the woman who had stayed behind is missing. Probably dead, but none of the others seem to notice, so Jade keeps her mouth shut. They work to shove a vending machine over the stairwell, halting the Dregs at least for a little while. Quickly, they make their escape to the command center, and the Doctor formulates a plan.

In the end, he splits them all up. Yaz, Ryan, and Graham are sent to barricade the breach in the wall, the Doctor and the young woman leave to find the kid who somehow wandered off, and Jade gets stuck with the man with atrocious green hair, trying to fix the teleport long enough to get everyone back to their origins. Using the syrillium 3 and the hopper virus to get syrillium 4 is, admittedly, a brilliant idea. Not that some random human would know how to do it, of course, so Jade is only somewhat helpful.

“You open the drive core and isolate the syrillium 3,” the man instructs as he works.

“I don’t know how!” Jade protests. “I’m a physics teacher, not a mechanic!”

Luckily for her cover, she doesn’t need to. The Doctor manages to rescue the kid, who is at least marginally more competent than his father. It’s enough to get them back, though just barely.

Naturally, as if this trip hasn’t been unpleasant enough, there’s a bought of self-sacrificial nonsense before they can leave. Finally, though, they’re back on the TARDIS. Jade is, of course, devastated by the loss of human life and the tragedy of her planet, as are the other companions.

“When did you know it was Earth?” Yaz demands, still breathing heavily.

“Just before you did,” the Doctor says, and the Master knows it’s a lie. He knows Earth’s timeline better than anyone else, and he knows that the humans bring about their own planet’s destruction many times over. Earth’s time as an orphan planet is only one of the many, many disasters that it experiences throughout time. She’s almost certain he knew from the minute he was told where they were; even she had recognized the name, however vaguely remembered.

He continues on, some ramble about it only being one of many possible futures, which is yet another lie. Timelines may be mutable, but they’re not nearly as fluid as he makes them out to be. His attempt as pacifying the humans seems to work, though, and as he talks she sees an opportunity.

“Doctor, what about your home planet?” she asks. “What’s it like?”

Instantly, his face darkens. “It’s… boring. Not worth seeing. You lot wouldn’t like it.” With astounding speed, he shifts to manic energy. “Come on, we still need to clean up this tentacle! Space squid won’t get themselves out of the TARDIS!”

Jade shoots a worried look to the other companions. After all, she’s going to need help persuading him to visit Gallifrey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I'm not a big fan of this episode?


End file.
